Home On The Range

Lorne Rubenstein

Lorne Rubenstein

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — I’ve enjoyed and appreciated many aspects of being a golf writer, and among them is working the range. What can be better for a golf writer/swing nerd/collector of stories than to hang out on the range, especially before a tournament starts? I did this recently at a PGA Tour Champions event, which you can read about here, and Tuesday I headed over to the range at the Champions Course at PGA National to see what I might find in advance of this week’s Honda Classic.

It didn’t take a moment before I noticed a couple of Canadians. There, in mid-range, Ben Silverman was hitting driver, and adjusting it as he saw fit, with his caddie Dave Stone at his side. A PING rep was also there. Silverman is 89th on the FedExCup points list and has won just under $400,000 in this 2017-18 wraparound season. He’s played 12 tournaments, posted two top 10s and has made eight cuts. Nice start, but he’s after more,of course.

I asked Silverman what he looked for in a driver. By the way, he’s not affiliated with PING or any equipment company except for Bettinardi. He uses a Bettinardi putter and his golf bag sports the small but highly respected company’s name.

“I want a driver that feels easy to work both ways,” Silverman said.

Ah, shaping the ball. Yes, that can be important if a player wants to get to some tight pins. Work the ball: That’s still important in this era of powerball, if not as critical for players who fly the ball 300 yards and more and hit wedges into even long par 4s, or what used to be long par 4s.

Given the period in which the 30-year-old Silverman finds himself on the PGA Tour after years of working his way there, I asked him how he felt about the distance he gets out of his driver. I first met him six or seven years ago and remember him being concerned that he didn’t drive the ball long enough to compete at the highest level. He’s competing at that level now but distance, he said, remains an issue. He was using TrackMan to dial in the distance he was hitting the driver. He doesn’t own a TrackMan, and was using one that belongs to PING.

“I still don’t feel long enough,” Silverman replied. He played the final round of last week’s Genesis Open at the Riviera Country Club with Rory McIlroy, one of the longest drivers in the game. He shot 73 and McIlroy, Silverman’s caddie Stone said, did nothing special but still shot 69.

“That impressed me,” Stone said. “You can see how he can run away with a tournament when he’s on. He has so much talent, and he’s also a really nice kid, so humble.”

Silverman had played nine holes on the Tuesday of the Genesis with Dustin Johnson and another nine with Adam Scott, two guys who regularly turn par 5s into par 4s and who rarely need to hit anything more than a short iron — a very short iron — into a par 4. Johnson’s clubhead speed with a driver averages 122 m.p.h. and his ball speed is 181 m.p.h. McIlroy clocks in at 120 and a ball speed of about 185. Silverman’s numbers are 109 and 163.

“Rory can get to pins that I can’t,” Silverman said. “There were a couple of hole locations at Riviera that he could attack and I couldn’t.” He said something similar about how he had to play away from certain pins at Torrey Pines during the Farmers Insurance Open last month, where he shot 76-78 on the weekend to finish T67. He finished T53 at Riviera. Golfer, know thyself.

Could Silverman find a few more yards, or has he maxed out?

“I think I can still improve there,” he said. “I can get more lag and get physically stronger. But I can’t work on these things until I get a break.”

Silverman is from Thornhill, Ont., and lives in the West Palm Beach area. The Honda is his seventh straight tournament. That’s a ton of golf, even for somebody who is only 30 and in excellent shape.

What did Stone, who is from Unionville, Ont., think of how his player is doing? He caddied on the LPGA Tour the last three years and has been with Silverman for every tournament this season. First, he pointed out that Silverman had just put a new set of PING iBlades in his bag. They’d played a practice round Tuesday morning before the range session and, Stone said, Silverman hit the ball awesome. “The PINGs were night and day,” he said.

He also carried PING G400 fairway woods, including a seven-wood he’d put in the bag two weeks ago at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am to replace a four-hybrid. His set includes Titleist Vokey wedges.

“The thing I’ve noticed about Ben is his ability to score on all types of courses,” Stone said. We chatted a minute or two more and then he and Silverman moved on to the putting green. I moved on down the range, where I stopped to chat with eight-time PGA Tour winner Brad Faxon, who was watching Gary Woodland, the winner of the Waste Management Phoenix Open earlier this month.

Woodland’s caddie Brennan Little, who was Mike Weir’s longtime caddie and who was with Weir when he won the 2003 Masters, was also in attendance. Woodland was hitting what looked like a three- or four-iron into the stratosphere. I don’t think his shots have come down to earth yet.

“Have you seen this?” Faxon asked me, pulling a seven-iron from Woodland’s bag. It was no ordinary seven-iron. It was very heavy, for one thing. I swung it to the top of my swing, as Faxon suggested I do, and waited for a click. There it was. Now it was time to start my downswing.

Woodland uses the training club, which is from Swedish coach Gabriel Hjerstedt, a two-time PGA Tour winner who has turned to full-time instruction. He made his reputation as a short-game coach. Graham DeLaet has worked with Hjerstedt and used his swing trainer.

“It’s a timing thing,” Faxon said. “You wait for the buzz at the top and then you start down.”

I soon started home, having worked the range for 90 minutes or so. I pulled into the parking lot and removed my clubs from my car to take up to my condo. A woman who had just pulled in noticed the clubs.

“How did you hit them?” she asked. I told her I hadn’t played but had been to the Honda. She stopped.

“Oh good, Tiger’s playing, isn’t he?”

He is, and I’ll be out early to watch his first round and also Silverman’s — jockeying back and forth between them. I’ll enjoy that, but really, almost nothing beats working the range. I’m a range rat, and not only with clubs to hit but a notebook and a pen at hand.